Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
Main Page: Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Forsyth of Drumlean's debates with the Department for Transport
(2 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberNot at all. Work is of course well under way within the department as to how best to use the £100 million that we have set out to look at the options on the route to Leeds and to finally make some progress on a mass transit system for Leeds. However, one of the key things about the Government’s decision for our plans for high-speed rail in the future is to make sure that we get as close to city centres as possible. In the older plans, it was far too often the case that the train never got anywhere close to the city centre but now places such as Derby and Nottingham will benefit.
My Lords, the report of the Economic Affairs Committee of this House on HS2 predicted that the net result would be that it would run over budget and we would lose the necessary expenditure for east-west improvement of rail services in the north, which has come to pass. Given that the business case was based on the premise that there would be a need for more business travel and given that, as the Civil Service has shown, many people are now working from home, should the business case now be reviewed?
I reassure my noble friend that if there are changes to the budget or to the schedule, that will be put before Parliament in the six-monthly review. I slightly take issue about there being a lack of east-west investment from the Government. The £96 billion that we are investing in the integrated rail plan is a significant amount for east-west connectivity.